Content Marketing, Social Media, Flavor, Stories

When Can SEO Finally Die?

SEO is epic good.

SEO is the scourge of the internet.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been all the rage for the last 15 years. Back in 1998 I accidentally built the first and only snowboard accessories only online retailer (Snowboardstuff.com) simply because I got so good at SEO that I had too much traffic to my stupid webpage so i decided to sell stuff. (I was making a collapsible snowboarding pole and wanted snowboarders to take my survey.) Back then I could relatively easily get 1000’s of targeted visitors by being really good at being found on search engines. Even then good content was the answer. We sold more snowboard accessories than any other online retailer and many brick and mortar as well.

Then marketers found out about SEO. And the internet slowly went to hell.

Now obviously making your wonderful content/product/service easily found ON search engines so that your potential customers can find it is freaking awesome! Search engines are awesome. They can help you find the most bizarre stuff. They are the core of today’s internet. Although I predict that search engines as they exist today will decline in importance every year from now on as mobile apps, social etc takes its place.

Instead of focusing on being findable and making customers want to find you. They began to focus on being found. They focused on the search engine rather than the customer. In Google, Yahoo and Bing’s rush to make sweet algorithms to find cool stuff they also made it really easy (for a while) to game the code. Google kept up a constant battle to, at first, make search better (focus on customers and search results) but now they pretty much just try to keep the effing black hat SEO spammers from F’ing up the internet for the rest of us.

Ultimately, this is why we can’t have nice things in the SEO space: a trend starts out as authentic. Then more and more people pile on until only the barest trace of legitimate behavior remains.

If even Google now hates over obsession on SEO can we call it done? Kaput. Over. Dead. Before anyone loses their freaking minds, I am NOT saying that no one should optimize their content/site/product/services/cat videos to easily be found by searchers on search engines. The companies and people who do SEO well do it really, really well. It can work almost magic in getting your brand or content found on search engines. In short it is a very valuable, beneficial series of technical, tactical and strategical tool that goes hand in hand with producing great content, sharing it on social media and bringing your solution to your customer’s notice. I do NOT think that good SEO is dead or that all SEO companies and skills are negative. I use it every single day to help people find good content. I am instead saying the opposite. Instead of optimizing your content for search engines (which have been shown to be statistically irrelevant and extremely stingy in their spending habits)

The Great Strategery

Marketing Strategy and Social Media Reflections from an international man of mystery. Pioneering creative ideas in Social Media, Community Building and Brand Engagement with occasional bombasts on Great Coffee, Craft Beer and story telling. I currently write columns for Technorati , SocialMediaToday and Content Marketing Institute
I am the Director of Marketing and Coffee for IPCoffees importing green coffee from Mexico.
And I'm available for content crafting, product marketing and writing projects.
Hire me to make your brand's story more timely, relevant and contextual.

About Andy Newbom

My name is Andy Newbom. At this time there are less than 10 Newboms in the world. Not sure if thats good or bad.
Having founded and helped build several successful businesses over the last 20 years my passion in life has been creating award winning, best in class products and solving complex business problems using strategic marketing, social media and brand building. And I'm available for content crafting and writing projects.
Hire me to make your brand's story more timely, relevant and contextual.